browse: poetry:

prose poem: results 25–48 of 95

Another  by MELISSA KOOSMANN

2 April 2008
Vol. 8, No. 1

When the body does something right, a happiness gathers above and behind its left shoulder.

The body, sensing the happiness, knows not to catch it

but knows not that the happiness too knows not to catch the body, which as it happens feels more acutely feelings located outside itself;

Striped Cucumber Beetle  by MARK CUNNINGHAM

26 March 2008
Vol. 8, No. 1

For a few moments in the deep overcast of late afternoon, the creek-bank ferns and my Gatorade glowed the same green. The light from the Earth goes out into space, hits the sun, and makes it shine.

Wedge-shaped Beetle  by MARK CUNNINGHAM

24 March 2008
Vol. 8, No. 1

When I say, "I can feel the toxins in my brain," I know I'm wrong. There are no nerves in the brain. But the sentence itself is toxic.

Objects, a History  by MICHAEL S. RERICK

9 March 2008
Vol. 8, No. 1

Swiss, great-grandmother says "blood" to the row of the riverboat gently covering its tracks. Father defends their western terms, "I'm no wagon, no horse." Anchored—land, land ho—grandfather's in the motor, radio, hull, in the rain. Aunt J says "he touched it, it's ruined" and pops bread from a bread pan. Uncles talk Canada, a state away, with its good hunting, fishing.

Postcard from a Nude Beach  by RICHARD GARCIA

30 January 2008
Vol. 7, No. 4

The waves, as if they were ashamed, roll up to it tentatively, and just before they reach the shore, they turn back.

Undecided  by RICHARD GARCIA

28 January 2008
Vol. 7, No. 4

On the treadmill, he did not know if he was walking forward or backward. It was the same when he was stopped in traffic and the cars started to move and his car seemed to be drifting backward and he slammed on the breaks.

Notes on A Poem That Was Lost  by C. L. BLEDSOE

8 December 2007
Vol. 7, No. 4

181: Wooden hearted and dumb: Clearly he is referencing that terrible translation he loved so much of Valentroika's Russian epic, "Uncle Winter," in which the author melodes that "when my mother's voice grew unheard my heart/became cold as wood/laid in the ground for millennia."

It is well documented that the author obsessed over the untimely sickness of his mother in a manner similar to other pre-debauchist outlawed writers such as E. A. Poe, even going so far as to refer to himself as such.

In This Episode of Angels  by JANE ASHLEY

19 November 2007
Vol. 7, No. 3

In this episode of angels, a mortal couple strolls, hand in hand, down a hall, around a corner on a cruise ship when a door shuts, a gas leaks, and a frantic couple is sealed in a tunnel, in a vessel…

Hard Work Facilitates  by JANE ASHLEY

17 November 2007
Vol. 7, No. 3

Hard work facilitates sexual identification. Hardly against false epiphanies. I'll be solid ground; you be top of the world. I'll be down to earth; you be rising above. You be rising up.

The Reality of Your Spine  by JANE ASHLEY

15 November 2007
Vol. 7, No. 3

The reality of your spine will not render response an anthem. The more one depicts, the greater lack is felt. We begin at the base and set out on a skyward tracking stroke.

Pro Bono  by BRANDY WHITLOCK

8 November 2007
Vol. 7, No. 3

The bondsman wouldn't touch him, and when they bring him up, shuffling and handcuffed, you almost don't recognize your man. He looks beat. Meek. Maybe make-believe, like something's just gone off inside him. You're in the court of common pleas, but it feels to you like a lot of sermonizing, all mystical and official, all ritual, all well-oiled wood.

Luck of the Draw  by BRANDY WHITLOCK

6 November 2007
Vol. 7, No. 3

You're ripped and he's a little lit and on a whim you've crossed two states to get hitched. Right away it's clear the justice of the peace doesn't like the story here, and before he'll tie the knot, he says, he's got to ask about your breeding. What people you're from. What they might have to say about all this.

An Internal Chord  by ROBERT GIBBONS

20 August 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2

Watched the dark come on, landing on rooftops, the civility of apartment windows & streetlights emerging with it, accompanying it like some harmony, which could only be imagined, or painted, by a Whistler, say, as far away from Lowell as he could get…

Book Lover's Club Minutes  by KEVIN SIMMONDS

17 August 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2

The minutes were read and we dealt with all at hand: the Club tea, Wright and his "Black Boy," alms to the poor, and the Urban League's request that all Negroes stay away from the State Fair.

Works of Mercy  by NEIL DE LA FLOR

6 August 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2

The fisherman threatens to climb philodendrons with daisy cutters. Threatens to mount his motorbike barebacked. Ursula emerges from behind stacked bricks. Like hyenas they thrash in ghetto-rage.

Aphorisms for Frida Kahlo  by NEIL DE LA FLOR

4 August 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2

In 1972 Stephen Hawking postulated the existence of bone-crushing black holes where nothing could escape, not even a gizzard, or light. Hawking has changed his mind. Now he proposes that information can escape, a radiation of a peculiar sort, one that can transmit bursts of black light like a Britney Spears concert.

Why?  by NEIL DE LA FLOR

2 August 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2

Because his penis was there in my hand as a butter knife would have been in my hand if I was about to butter bread. I wasn't about to butter bread or say no but I was happy nonetheless. It was a little weapon, a toy.

What was it like?

It was like he wouldn't listen to me but listening to me the way our father would listen to us with his eyes closed nodding yay ya, yay ya.

you and mornings  by TONY MANCUS

13 July 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2

In the morning my face wears wrinkles. Pants face. Sleepy pants. Face of demonic possession and lack of caffeine. God then is the sound of the faucet, the coffee dripping.

Please Lord, Do Not Hunt Me!  by ROBERT OSTROM

8 May 2007
Vol. 7, No. 1

For hope, we blended myths with our known truths. We knew the hair of the dead continued to grow, but did buried babies learn to talk? We grew confused. Am I a horse or a crow? My grandfather was a grave so I am a grave.

To His Nephew  by ROBERT OSTROM

5 May 2007
Vol. 7, No. 1

In my bureau is a matchbox. I am not going to make this easy for you. In the box there are two cloves, a snip of lavender, and a piece of ribbon. Inside the ribbon, a girl walks tiptoe with outstretched arms past the living room. She is my grandmother. In her pocket…

His Vipers, He Writes  by CHARLES FREELAND

24 March 2007
Vol. 7, No. 1

We've come to expect disillusion and madness where before there had been simply chiffon.

An Ad in the Chicago Defender  by DELANA DAMERON

5 February 2007
Vol. 6, No. 4
ekphrastic

don't need much room. forty acres would have been too much. just need a corner of a corner to rest my eyes between shifts. will not be distracted by women or love or necessity of the loins.

To My Husband  by KAREN CHIEN

28 January 2007
Vol. 6, No. 4

Darling, please do not touch me. Every time you do I throw up and lose my fat belly.

I Saw You  by KAREN MACKINTOSH

26 September 2006
Vol. 6, No. 3

You were drinking water from the tap. As you spit into the basin, a woman came out of the stall. She pushed your head down, held it under the tap…

 

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